1943

Report dated November 11, 1943 Vilna Ghetto executions
Contemporary Source

1943-11-11 / The Security Police in Vilna: “8,019 Jews, Jewesses, and Jewish Children Have Been Executed”

On 9 November 1943, the Commander of the Security Police and SD in Lithuania sent a telex to the Vilna office and ordered the preparation of a report on the “executive/security situation in all of Lithuania for the year 1943 up to the present”. The Security Police office in Vilna submitted its report two days later, on 11 November 1943. On the Jews, the report stated that the Vilna Ghetto and the smaller rural ghettos together had contained “24,180 Jews”. Of these, “8,019 Jews, Jewesses, and Jewish children have been executed”, while a further “14,000 Jews were registered and dispatched in collective transports” for forced labor in the Vaivara oil shale region. According to the report, only “2,382 Jews in the city district of Vilna and 1,720 in the rural district” remained.

Contemporary Source

1943-11-22 / Jewish Escape Report from the Security Police in Ponevezh: “Levinas was given special treatment … His death was to be expected in any case”

A report dated 22 November 1943 from the Security Police and SD field office in Ponevezh (Panevėžys) to the Security Police and SD in Kaunas adressed the escape of a “Jewish labor detachment at the District Commissioner in Ponevezh”. It states that “27 Jews, including one policeman, were apprehended” and “that they had fled because the District Commissioner had told them that all would be shot if even one person escaped.”

The report further notes that the recaptured Jewish prisoner Kurisa Levinas “was given special treatment on the orders of Hauptsturmführer Schmitz, as he had been shot while fleeing and was seriously wounded. His death was to be expected in any case.”

The report requests a decision as to whether the remaining Jewish prisoners should also undergo “special treatment”. In the case of the “Jewish policeman Bakas”, the Ponevezh office recommends that “special treatment be considered” because “he failed to report the events, although he was aware of them”.

Report dated November 7, 1943 Sonderkommando 1005 Kaunas
Contemporary Source

1943-11-07 / Kaunas Security Police Report: “Jewish bones are being burned” at Fort IX

A report dated November 7, 1943, written by a employee attached to the Commander of the Security Police in Kaunas states that the local criminal police had determined that “nighttime fires at Fort IX”were caused by the burning of “Jewish bones”. This activity correspomds with the operations of Sonderkommando 1005 at Kaunas, a program led by Paul Blobel, which was tasked with exhuming mass graves and destroying evidence of Nazi atrocities across Eastern Europe.

Contemporary Source

1943-03-24 / Swiss Intelligence Receives 1942 German Report on Ukraine that “Executions of Jews Have Not Improved Our Reputation”

In March 1943, the Swiss Legation in Germany forwarded a transcript of a report from Alfred Rosenberg’s Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories dated May 13, 1942, on the public sentiment in German-occupied Ukraine during the Second World War. Among other observations, the report noted that “the exemplary conduct of the German soldiers dispelled the initial concerns about the alleged brutality of our troops. If we disregard the executions of Jews, which have not improved our reputation—however much Jewry is hated there—the hardships necessary in war have not greatly impressed the Russian people, for they are accustomed to such things”.

Contemporary Source

1943-02-06 / Pohl’s Report to Himmler: 825 Waggons of “Scrap Material from the Jewish Resettlement” in the Auschwitz and Lublin camps

Report by SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl, head of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-WVHA), to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, dated 6 February 1943, on “the quantity of scrap material from the Jewish resettlement that has so far been shipped out from the Auschwitz and Lublin camps.” The report states that a total of 825 railway wagons of confiscated property were collected, sorted, and dispatched from the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps.

Report dated June 30, 1943 by Katzmann on the Final SOlution in Galicia
Contemporary Source

1943-06-30 / The Katzmann Report: “Solution of the Jewish Question in Galicia”

On June 30, 1943, the SS and Police Leader of Galicia in Lemberg (Lwiw) SS-Gruppenführer Fritz Katzmann submitted to the Higher SS and Police Leader East Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, a top secret report on the “Solution of the Jewish Question in Galicia.” During the ghetto relocations of winter 1941/1942, the report states that “all work-shy and antisocial Jewish riffraff were identified during the screening and given special treatment” – a standard Nazi euphemism for extrajudicial killing.

Katzmann records that “resettlement from the District of Galicia began in April 1942 and was carried out continuously,” and that by November 1942 “254,989 Jews had already been resettled or relocated.” He goes on to explain that “the resettlement was carried out vigorously, so that as of 23 June 1943 all Jewish residential districts could be dissolved,” and added that the district was now “free of Jews, except for those who are in the camps under the control of the SS and Police Leader.” Jews who were “still occasionally apprehended are given special treatment”. By 27 June 1943, Katzmann reports “a total of 434,329 Jews had been resettled” with only 21,156 left in forced-labor camps.

Adressing the plunder of Jewish property, the report notes that “extraordinary valuables were secured and placed at the disposal of the ‘Reinhard’ special staff,” which refers to Operation Reinhard, the program responsible for the extermination of the Jews in the Generalgouvernement and the large-scale confiscation of their assets.

Daily report dated March 2, 1943 on Auschwitz crematorium 4 gas chamber
Contemporary Source

1943-03-02 / Construction Report on Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau: “Concreting the Floor in the Gas chamber”

Daily construction report from the firm W. Riedel & Sohn, dated 2 March 1943, detailing the work carried out on Crematorium IV at Auschwitz. The document records the number of workers present, the hours they worked, and the tasks completed that day—from plastering walls and fitting ventilation elements to “concreting the floor in the gas chamber.”

Short version of KOrherr report
Contemporary Source

1943-04-19 / The Short Version of the Korherr Report: “European Jewry has probably lost almost half of its total population”

On April 19, 1943, SS statistician Richard Korherr submitted a shortened version of his Korherr Report – the SS’s statistical account of the “Final Solution of the European Jewish Question” – to the personal staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, for presentation to Adolf Hitler. In the report, Korherr estimated that “the reduction of Jewry in Europe from 1937 to the beginning of 1943 is to be estimated at 4½ million” and noted that “only part of the deaths of Soviet-Russian Jews in the occupied eastern territories could be recorded, while those in the rest of European Russia and at the front are not included at all.” He concluded that “European Jewry since 1933 has probably lost almost half of its total population,” of which “only about half has flowed to other continents.”

Gauleiter Kube Eduard Strauch Minsk 1943 special treatment
Contemporary Source

1943-07-20 / “A Germany of Kant and Goethe” – Gauleiter Kube’s Clash with the SS over the Killings of Jews in Minsk

On July 20, 1943, SS-Obersturmbannführer Eduard Strauch, Commander of the Security Police and the SD in White Ruthenia, issued a memorandum on a confrontation with Gauleiter Wilhelm Kube after Strauch had that morning “delivered for special treatment” (Sonderbehandlung) the entire Jewish staff of the General Commissariat in Minsk – an euphemism for their execution. Kube condemned the actions of the Security Police as “unworthy of a German human being and of a Germany of Kant and Goethe” and accused Strauch’s “men derived a kind of perverse pleasure from these executions”. Strauch, in turn, complained that “even the fact that the Jews who were to undergo special treatment had their gold dental fillings properly removed by medical specialists had become the subject of gossip”.

Letter dated April 10, 1943
Contemporary Source

1943-04-10 / Himmler’s Order to Sanitize the Korherr Report: “At No Point Should There Be Any Mention of Special Treatment of the Jews”

In April 1943, Heinrich Himmler ordered changes to the Korherr Report, the SS’s statistical account of the “Final Solution” he considered as quite good “for camouflage purposes”. A letter dated April 19, 1943 instructed that the term “special treatment of the Jews” be removed from the report. The euphemism “passed through the camps in the General Government and the camps in the Warthegau” was to be used to denote the death toll from the extermination camps at Bełżec, Treblinka, Sobibór, and Kulmhof (Chełmno).

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